Mercury and Psyche

1857
Marble
Staatliche Museen, Berlin

The German Reinhold Begas, a pupil of Gottfried Schadow and Christian Rauch, initially adhered to a graceful Neoclassicism. However, in 1856 he went to Italy, where he discovered the work of Michelangelo and Gianlorenzo Bernini, and from then on his style underwent a change.